tempus fugit

First Runner Up for Comment of the Day, and a weak response

2015-08-09

Cirrus

Tokyo, Japan August 7, 2015

Our whole species faces extinction within perhaps a dozen generations as we face the threat of destruction that is caused by irreversible climate change – yet not a word was mentioned of it in the GOP debates. The issue of race relations – which is a dominant feature of American life – whether between blacks and whites – immigrants and non-immigrants – is brushed over if addressed at all – yet trivial topics like political correctness and whether or not a candidate will support the party nominee are treated as worthy of serious attention and media discussion of such distractions. To blame are the candidates who seem to have little awareness of the larger picture – which is nightmarish consequences of going to war and the apocalyptic fate that awaits us if we continue to be sluggish or unresponsive to global environmental problems – but also to blame are us, the consumers, of the media infatuation with Donald Trump and unfortunately the debate format – which does not allow for republican and democrat presidential candidates to directly debate each other until we are down to only 2 candidates – thus we are left with this narrow band of issues specific to each party’s base.

205 Recommend

[response to above, as published in NYT comment section]

APG

Michigan August 7

This post goes to the heart of the question. Does the American public believe alarmist propaganda anymore? Extinction within a dozen generations is not verifiable, it is not evidentiary, and it is not helpful in any way, unless your purpose is to instill fear. Many Americans are turned off immediately by this brass exaggeration, and therefore dismiss the climate alarmism. They are not science deniers. They are particularly offended when presented with false science – that is observed results which are subsequently manipulated in order to achieve the intended outcome. The problem is that these offenses accumulate; the alarmism, the falsified data, the exaggerations of epic proportions cause a dismissal of the premise among a great many people.

The premise that the global climate may be changing and it may cause serious disruption, is a premise worth evaluating and contemplating. However, when the premise is distorted in such a way as to cause many people to reject any mention of it as propaganda, we have failed.

Recommend [no-one recommended this comment]My comments:

“The problem is that these offenses accumulate; the alarmism, the falsified data, the exaggerations of epic proportions cause a dismissal of the premise among a great many people.”

Here we have a plethora of imagined “offenses” which are really the talking points of paid coal-company shills. There is no falsified, exaggerated, or manipulated data: the REAL data demonstrates that global warming is occurring and is irreversible within our lifetimes. It is all real, it IS evidence, and it is NOT alarmist at all: if anything, it is the most studied and critiqued data set in existence. We are sorry if you are alarmed, but climatologists are not being alarmist: they are merely presenting the facts as they have studied them, with the inevitable conclusions. There is no maybe about this.

The fact is that, even if we were to cease all carbon dioxide production now, the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is so long that its effects will continue for more than a hundred years. What is more, the effects are only beginning to make themselves felt. The climate system is unbalanced, and returning to balance will take a hundred years and cause dramatic weather events along with a huge increase in average temperature, sufficient to cause extinction for many species and to force migration of the rest. This is no joke, and there is nothing falsified about it.